Fable

Translated by Jarek Zawadzki

Please, tell me, Mama, with your velvet voice so true,
about the people, flowers and trees, tell me a fable.
Tell me about a honey growing linden, too;
that I may store them neatly in my mind and label:

those true-life images that in the temples pound
like beats of horses’ hooves upon a flowery lea.
Tell me about the butterflies. For I be bound
To hail my fable brothers and the apple-tree

that will be giving out its fruits again for free.
Maybe a hedgehog finds them mid the leaves in fall,
maybe a passing bird will feed on them, we’ll see.
Can fables, Mom, come true, can they come true at all?